Theres no shopping this week. Tears and Sobs all round. Think of the money you are saving. Think of the money you can spend next weekFiFi has not had a minute to get out of her Balenciaga heels to sit down and write. The good news is that she has been too busy nicking into The Morning show to talk shoes. She has been presenting the Whats What Style Sessions from Bondi to Newcastle and now is hopping on a plane to Brisbane. The bad news? From the 29th October she will be in Paris. Sorry.
See FiFi live in action and book a seat for a style session whatswhat.com.au
So now sit back relax and drool over spring summer’s best shows from WWD;
LANVIN
One of the wonderful things about fashion in general and especially in Paris is that there is no one right way. From the wildly fantastical to the uber-practical, if it’s good, it will find an audience. That said, there is something almost bizarre in the way Alber Elbaz has connected with his audience, both the industry pros who see the clothes on the runway and, ultimately, the women who buy them. You would have been hard-pressed to find a woman exiting his Lanvin show on Sunday who was not aglow with the rush of possibilities — how the clothes will look in my store, on the pages of my magazine, on me.
Elbaz is doing something fairly rare these days. Not only does he make clothes for real adults — virtually all designers with significant business do that — he makes no bones about it. And yet he manages to put them on the runway in a manner that elevates real-life fabulous to the level of its runway-only counterpart. “There’s no transparency and we don’t have any prints,” he boasted before the show, implying clearly his contention that his customers will wear the latter sparingly and the former, not at all. Elbaz’s spring is all about inventive — make that ingenious — draping aided big-time by the “P” word — polyester. He used this wonderfully supple, fluid fabric for more than half the collection, including sensual no-seam dresses and flyaway trenchcoats in navy and taupe for an ultrachic update on the classic ensemble, and a prime candidate for the season’s best buy-in-multiples uniform. Dresses sans coats were swirled to lean perfection and belted, and while Elbaz also offered a glamorous take on sportswear. He brightened up with jewel-toned cocktail dresses in shades of emerald, amethyst and sapphire in typically crisp chemises adorned with demonstrative ruffles at the neck. Conversely, a white dress got a flurry of feathers — in front only, the better for sitting through dinner. For big evenings, Elbaz went gracefully flamboyant, with high-impact, low-anxiety, ruffle-edged tents of color that billowed as the girls walked.
MIU MIU
The world’s a stage for Miuccia Prada, who appropriated theater clichés for her spring Miu Miu collection. “It’s all representations of life mixed with the idea of theater,” she said backstage. “It’s about how people dress themselves to perform in life.” To drive the point home, she showed against projections of performance imagery — "Swan
Lake,” an orchestra, the Burning Man — which distracted rather than enhanced in the Avenue Foch mansion’s cramped quarters. In Prada’s eyes, life will require abbreviated options for spring, as nosebleed-worthy hemlines were the collection’s strongest statement. The traditional theater personas of Harlequin and Pierrot were well-represented on micro-minidresses — or hip-length tops, depending on how you look at them — where Prada mixed a multicolored diamond motif with rich, Klimt-like prints and trompe l’oeil dickeys. Of course, Prada’s not one to ignore the fringe. Thus, she also played to characters who populate stereotypical male fantasies: the French maid in white, bibbed blouses worn with naughty black blouson bloomers; the Playboy bunny in her sheer, button-on cuffs and collars and busty tops, and the Lolita, channeled via starched white baby dolls worn with teetering stilettos and lacy anklets. Sexy? You bet. But for all that obvious eroticism, the clothes charmed rather than offended.
CHLOE When Paulo Melim Anderson took over the creative reins at Chloé last season, he put forth a bold new statement, one many found too aggressive for a house better known for its charming, girlish appeal. Well, it seems like Andersson paid close attention to those critics. He lightened the mood considerably for spring, doing so by playing
majorly to the current transparency trend his way, without a ruffle in sight. Instead, he delivered it all with an artsy panache. To wit: there were paint smudges and broad sweeping brush strokes across dresses, jumpers and skirts. Other looks, meanwhile, were intriguingly patchworked with abstract blocks of color.Everything had an undone, haphazard — but not careless — feel. Cuts, seams and splices of color came in inventive asymmetrics. When Anderson digressed to include a few tailored looks and cozy to-the-floor cardigans, it left one hoping for more to add variety to his lineup. The numerous artsy flyaway frocks made the collection a bit repetitive — we got the message — and it would have been nice to see a broader vision of his girl. But, to his credit, this gentler attitude is a move in the right direction. After all, the Chloé customer doesn’t stomp all angst-like; she steps out, rather, with an alluringly cool confidence.
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